Amazon.com and billionaire financier Ken Griffin are among the backers anchoring a US$500 million ($655.11 million) investment in small nuclear reactors, a burgeoning technology that has been heralded as the next era for atomic energy.
The Seattle-based company has signed agreements to develop the new breed of reactors — dubbed small modular reactors, or SMRs — in both Washington and Virginia, investing in in X-Energy, a privately-held advanced nuclear reactor developer.
The financing will help pay for the development of more than 5 gigawatts of new power projects coming online across the US by 2039, X-Energy said in a statement Wednesday.
Amazon’s announcement comes as technology companies are searching for new energy supplies to power massive data centres needed to run artificial intelligence systems.
Alphabet’s Google announced Monday it was backing the nuclear power, and signed an agreement with Kairos Power to construct a series of SMRs that use molten-salt cooling technology.
“Nuclear energy is both carbon-free and able to scale, which is why it’s an important area of investment for Amazon,” Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, said in a statement. “Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come.”
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Data centre expansion and other factors, are expected to drive electricity demand up by 15% to 20% over the next decade, according to the Energy Department. Data centers could consume as much as 9% of US electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% of total load in 2023, according to a report in May by the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute.
Amazon, which is poised to discuss the investment Wednesday morning at its offices in Crystal City, Virginia, has also signed agreements with Washington-based utility Energy Northwest and Virginia’s Dominion Energy to develop SMR projects.
Amazon said the reactors, which will be constructed, owned and operated by Energy Northwest, were expected to generate roughly 320 megawatts, with the option to expand to 960 megawatts total.
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In Virginia, Amazon said it had signed an agreement with Dominion to explore the development of an SMR project at the utility’s existing North Anna nuclear power station that could bring at least 300 megawatts of power to the region.
Unlike traditional nuclear reactors, which average roughly 1,000 megawatts in size, SMRs can be built at factories, delivered by truck or train, and then assembled on-site, saving time and money.
Utilities can install just one or bundle several together, expanding the potential market by including countries that don’t need a big conventional nuclear plant.
Still, the technology hasn’t yet been deployed at scale, commercially.
And SMR’s have their critics, including those who say the economics of nuclear power is flawed no matter what the size of the reactors.
NuScale Power announced in November it was canceling plans to build a series of SMRs in Utah amid surging costs.
Meanwhile, surging demand for power is prompting utilities to build more natural gas-fired plants, undermining lofty environmental goals for both the industry and tech firms.
“Artificial intelligence may be new, but claims that the next revolutionary nuclear technology will solve our energy problems have been around since we first split the atom,” Johanna Neumann, an official with Environment America, said in a statement. “It’s time for Big Tech to recommit to solutions that work and pose less risk to our environment and health, including making data centers as energy efficient as possible and committing them to be powered by new renewable energy sources.”
